


King Saul Fell on His Sword

by cybergreen



Series: Season 13 Codas [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode: s13e14 Coda, Episode: s13e14 Good Intentions, Gen, Introspective Castiel, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 19:37:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13910769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cybergreen/pseuds/cybergreen
Summary: (some things you do for love, love, love)Sometimes, Castiel thinks, they forget what he is.





	King Saul Fell on His Sword

**Author's Note:**

> i love chaotic good cas but man i worry about him

Enochian. Ancient Canaanite.

The languages swirl in his mind, red-tinged and cloying like smoke roiling off the hot sand of an ancient, desert battlefield.

His native tongue had felt foreign in his mouth, cut through with a schism of distance and time, clunky when it should’ve flowed like waves and particles of light, effortless. When Dean snarked about messing up words he’d bristled right up to the tips of the feathers he still had. It’d hurt, the motion, less so than Dean’s words, but the pain did a funny thing, flipping inside him into anger. For all he’s fallen, never to be a part of the Host again, silenced as he is amongst those who cannot understand his language, Enochian is still _his_.

Canaanite echoed with the distant din of clashing metal, the scuff of leather on sand, the roars spat from bloodied mouths. He doesn’t remember much more: why he was there, how long, what the outcome was. Something else taken from him.

 _Greedy_ , some old part of him chastises, in a voice like his own, twisted. Yet it speaks truth. Greedy – angels don’t _have_ ; they don’t own; nothing is _theirs_. Nothing had, ergo, nothing to be taken. The mission is above all else, the only acceptable attachment, and there was no honesty in calling that attachment love. The angels serve the Host; they serve Heaven. They do not love it.

Castiel, though, angel but not angel, he _has_ – he has a family, friends, a home more home than heaven, messy and tenuous and slippery though it all may be; after millennia with nothing to hold onto, it’s unsurprising that his unpracticed grasp would fumble from time to time, clumsy; he is overzealous and distant in equal measure, holding too tight and letting go.

But when – _if_ , he growls to himself, because he’s nothing if not hope’s stubborn bastard – everything he’s got slips through his hands, it’s not going to be because someone _took it._

Nobody is going to take the people he loves.

No, he’s got a white-knuckle grip on them, and not heaven, not hell, not a soul on earth, not even a Prophet of God will pry that loose.  

Rage and terror uncoil in a white heat within him, setting an electric current beneath his teeth, reliving watching Dean gasp and struggle for air, and then the strain of his heart as he raced through the bunker, those seconds ticking up and up and Castiel not being able to _see_ him, not knowing what he’d find when he rounded the corner: Dean choking, Dean on the floor, unconscious, not breathing, Dean—

Castiel becomes aware of the pain in his palms gradually, after the blur clears from his vision and the rush fades from his ears, and he looks down at the slow-leaking red where his fingernails are biting crescents into his skin. He unclenches his fists, feels each individual drag of the nails pulling back from inside the wounds.

There’s blood on his hands.

Castiel has a conscience. He does, despite what Sam and Dean likely think, still understand right from wrong _._ What he did to Donatello, he did not do easily; it was a wrong made rightly; it weighs heavily on him, another weight on top of all the weight he carries, because he _can_ carry it. He carries it, all of it, so that they – so that Sam and Dean, his family, the people he _loves_ – don’t have to. Sometimes, Castiel thinks, they forget what he is: an instrument of divine judgement, doing what must be done; he was created to carry out the mission in the manner of all-consuming devotion; _I’m a soldier_. The words echo from a nearer past and as he stares at the bag he packed he feels so very old and yet so very new, all he is and was and might be warring inside him.

He’s more familiar with war than he is with love, and it’s as if he’s caught in a tailspin, tumbling wing over broken wing, down into a past version of himself that feels more borrowed than his vessel has felt in years. The old battle armor he’s trying to drag on and strap to himself doesn’t fit anymore.

But he shrugs it on anyways. He bears that weight and ignores the cracking of himself, like ice not grown cold enough to hold a person. Dangerous. The threat of drowning lurking darkly underneath. There isn’t anything he can do about it. Nothing he knows; how not to be consumed by duty. How not to be consumed by love.

In the rearview mirror of his truck he sees Dean, arms crossed in the driveway as he watches him go, not stopping him, getting smaller and smaller until he’s gone, and Castiel is struck with the certain, sudden thought that, even if they win this war, he’s already lost.

**Author's Note:**

> someday i really need to get around to writing more happiness for these two, my goodness. 
> 
> title & summary line from the mountain goats' "love love love"
> 
> feel free to chat with me on [tumblr](https://honeyed-wings.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
